Who made the pivot to Asia? Putin

7:18 PM,
May 22, 2014

Charles Krauthammer

Written by

Charles Krauthammer
Columnist

On Wednesday, it finally happened - the pivot to Asia. No, not the United States. It was Russia that turned East.

In Shanghai, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed a spectacular energy deal - $400 billion of Siberian natural gas to be exported to China over 30 years.

This is huge. By indelibly linking producer and consumer - the pipeline alone is a $70 billion infrastructure project - it deflates the post-Ukraine Western threat (mostly empty, but still very loud) to cut European imports of Russian gas. Putin has just defiantly demonstrated that he has other ...